Teen Ink Forums

Teen Ink Constitution

If you are reading this, then you may be new to Teen Ink ^_^. So first, I just would like to say, welcome!! We’re always glad to have new members to give advice, read their work, or just to chat. If you have any questions, feel free to ask anyone for help.

Below are some rules for Teen Ink, so please read and follow them. Some of them would apply to the forums, others to commenting on other people’s work, and some of them could work for both. Either way, please use them:

1) Please do not be a troll, or spam.

2) If you do see someone trolling, ask them politely to stop, but if they continue, report them to the Moderator.

3) If the Moderator isn’t on and/or the reporting doesn’t work, then ignore whoever is bothering everyone, and don’t feed the troll! Confronting them almost never doesn’t works.

4) Do not be afraid to report people to the Moderator if they are being offensive, annoying, or just plain rude.

5) If someone says something hurtful, don’t just ignore it, whether it is towards you or someone else. Politely tell the person that he or she is being rude, and to please stop. If they continue, then report the bully. Also, if someone says something hurtful, don’t try to match the comment up with an equally-derisive comment.

6) If someone has made offending comments and they make a genuine apology, try to forgive them. Everyone messes up at some time or another.

7) Please, no cussing, some people just aren't comfortable around it.

8) Please respect and do not insult others. Speak to your fellow Teen Inkers as if they were built like a wrestler and have a short temper (quote by CarrieAnn13).

9) To add on to the last rule, never defame a person. Those who are not on or not talking to you at the moment may cause lots of drama later, and it's just plain rude.

10) Don’t make fun of other people based on race, gender, religion, political beliefs, sexuality, etc.

11) This is forum essentially for writers, so while you don’t always have to be perfect with your grammar and spelling, please make it at least readable. 12) Also, please do not use textese. Not only does this sometimes make it unreadable and annoying to look through, some Teen Inkers don’t text or use the abbreviations that often.

13) Try not to use put your letters completely in bold, italics, or in uppercase when typing, it gives some people headaches.

14) Please no obscene, lude, or inappropriate comments in general, they are definitely not permitted.

15) Try to support all new Teen Inkers, make them feel welcome and be conscious of existing members. Just be nice in general. ^_^.

16) Teen Ink is like a family, so help support and encourage one another. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it.

18) Don’t make a new thread if there’s already one similar to yours, it clogs up the forums.

19) Especially in the philosophy threads, try to keep yourself from changing the subject.

20) Try to keep most things PG-rated, remember, there are younger teens on this site.

21) When rating someone else’s work, don’t give them a one-star rating for no reason. If you do give them a low rating, at least explain why and what could’ve made it better.

22) When you are critiquing someone else’s work don’t just say “This is terrible” or “This is amazing.” Instead, try to give the author **specific** examples of where they need to fix things, and also where their stronger points are.

23) If someone gives you a not-so-glowing critique, don't get mad. Not only is it just one opinion out of many, but also think of it as a way yo can grow as a writer.

24) All in all, please just try to be courteous and respectful for everyone, and follow this cliché golden rule: “treat others how you would want to be treated.”

25) And lastly, if you have an idea for another rule, just post it in this thread in bold.

Thanks for everyone’s who has read this, and credits go to Will, Josie_Jo, Thorn, ChristySparrow, CarrieAnn13, Rayyn, me, and Destinee for making this ^_^.

This is really great, but I'm having some problems with people rating my work one star and not telling me why. I don't really care if it is rated one star, but I'd like to know why so I can improve my work. And I know other people have had this happen to them a lot. Is there any way to see who rated you? I'd like to ask the person who gave me the explanationless one star why they did.

I'm really sorry to say this, but that's been happening to everyone since like, the beginning of time. People do it to try to increase their own project's ranking. If you want, I'd be happy to look at your work and give you genuine feedback. :)